1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to data communications over networks primarily designed for transmission of television and data signals, and particularly to a system and method for separately processing radio frequency data and Ethernet data at respective hubs.
2. The Relevant Technology
Basic CATV System Architecture. Cable television systems (CATV) were initially deployed so that remotely located communities were allowed to place a receiver on a hilltop and then use coaxial cable and amplifiers to distribute received signals down to the town which otherwise had poor signal reception. These early systems brought the signal down from the antennas to a “head end” and then distributed the signals out from this point. Since the purpose was to distribute television channels throughout a community, the systems were designed to be one-way and did not have the capability to take information back from subscribers to the head end.
Over time, it was realized that the basic system infrastructure could be made to operate two-way with the addition of some new components. Two-way CATV was used for many years to carry back some locally generated video programming to the head end where it could be up-converted to a carrier frequency compatible with the normal television channels.
Definitions for CATV systems today call the normal broadcast direction from the head end to the subscribers the “forward path” and the direction from the subscribers back to the head end the “return path”. A good review of much of today's existing return path technology is contained in the book entitled Return Systems for Hybrid Fiber Coax Cable TV Networks by Donald Raskin and Dean Stoneback, hereby incorporated by reference as background information.
One additional innovation has become pervasive throughout the CATV industry over the past 10 years. That is the introduction of analog optical fiber transmitters and receivers operating over single mode optical fiber. These optical links have been used to break up the original tree and branch architecture of most CATV systems and to replace that with an architecture labeled Hybrid Fiber/Coax (HFC). In this approach, optical fibers connect the head end of the system to neighborhood nodes, and then coaxial cable is used to distribute signals from the neighborhood nodes to homes, businesses, and the like in a small geographical area. Return path optical fibers are typically located in the same cable as the forward path optical fibers so that return signals can have the same advantages as the forward path.
HFC provides several benefits. Using fiber for at least part of the signal transmission path makes the resulting system both more reliable and improves signal quality. Failures in the hybrid systems are often less catastrophic than in traditional tree and branch coaxial systems because most failures affect only a single sub-tree or neighborhood.
CATV return paths have become much more important over the past few years because of their ability to carry data signals from homes, businesses and other user locations back to the head end and thereby enable Internet traffic to flow in and out of the home at data rates much higher than is possible with normal telephone modems. Speeds for these so-called cable modem based systems are typically around 1 Mb/s or greater as opposed to the 28.8 Kb/s to 56 Kb/s rates associated with telephone based data transmission. CATV based Internet access is typically sold on a monthly basis without time based usage charges, thus enabling people to be connected to the Internet 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.
With the advent of these advanced services, there also arose numerous problems with using a physical CATV plant designed to transmit video signals from town council meetings (using the forward path) to provide high-speed Internet access for hundreds, if not thousands, of users simultaneously (using both the forward and return path). These problems are generally related to the return path link, which are described in detail below.
The Aggregation Problem. Economically, the main problem that exists for CATV return path technology is that the return path signals need to be aggregated, which means the signals from many users are summed into a combined signal. The combined signal is then processed by equipment at the head end. Return signals are summed because processing the return path signals from their multi-frequency radio frequency (RF) format to digital packets ready for the Internet requires the use of an expensive device called a CMTS (cable modem termination system). This equipment is so expensive that it cannot be cost justified today on the basis of processing only one or even a couple of return signals. By aggregating the return signals of many users, the high cost of CMTS's is spread over enough users to make their use economically feasible.
Aggregation is also important because it allows for efficient use of optical fibers. Most HFC systems provide only a small number of optical fibers for each neighborhood, and thus these systems do not have enough optical fibers to provide a separate optical fiber for each return signal. Aggregation allows numerous return signals to be placed onto and transmitted by a single optical fiber, making efficient use of the existing fiber plant.
Aggregation, when done by simply combining various RF level signals from the return signals of individual users, results in a degradation of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) for the system. SNR must be kept above a certain level in order for the RF signals received at the head end to be reliably processed into digital data that is error free.
The Ingress Problem. A problem known as “ingress” is often made much worse by the aggregation of many RF signals. The term “ingress” refers to the injection of noise into the return path signals. The noise signals typically injected into the return paths of CATV systems are of unpredictable frequency and strength. In the forward path, all signals originate at the head end and this single location is controlled and therefore is able to be well managed so as to minimize the injection of noise. On the other hand, the return path has many points of input (typically one or more per home or business) and the return path operates by aggregating all of the inputs from a geographical area onto a single coaxial cable. For example, consider a system in which there are a hundred users coupled to a single coaxial cable. Ninety-nine of the users may be submitting valid Internet traffic (i.e., return path signals) through their cable modems, with low levels of associated noise, while one user may have faulty wiring that causes the noise associated with an amateur radio transmitter or television or personal computer to be coupled into the return path. This is ingress and it can result in the loss of data for the other ninety-nine well-behaved users.
The summing or aggregation process applies to ingress as well. So it is not necessary that any single point of ingress be the one causing system failure, but rather it is possible that several different subscribers may be sources of some portion of the noise that degrades the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the system.
The Link Degradation Problem. Analog optical fiber return path links suffer from another problem. The links degrade with distance and connector problems. This is due to reflections from imperfections at connector and splice interfaces and back scattering in the optical fiber over distance. Connector and splice problems can cause degradation in the laser relative intensity noise (RIN), and all of these phenomena, including back scattering, cause light arriving at the receiver to have traveled different distances down the fiber and hence some of the arriving light can be out of phase with the transmitted RF signal. In all cases, the SNR of the link degrades with distance, as noted in Return Systems for Hybrid Fiber Coax Cable TV Networks. Link degradation also can occur from the substantial temperature swings associated with the outdoor environment through which return path links travel, as well as rough handling of the return path link equipment by installers, for example during the installation of equipment at the top of poles.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a prior art cable television system 100 that uses conventional analog return path optical fiber links. The system in FIG. 1 conforms generally to 1999 industry standards, and is susceptible to the ingress and link degradation problems described above. Each subtree 102 of the system consists of a coaxial cable 106 that is coupled to cable modems 108 used by subscribers for Internet access. The coaxial cable 106 is also coupled to set top boxes and other equipment not relevant to the present discussion. The coaxial cable 106 of each subtree 102 is coupled to at least one forward path optical fiber 110 and at least one return path optical fiber 112. Additional optical fibers (not shown) may be used for the forward path transmission of television programming. An optoelectronic transceiver 114 provides the data path coupling the coaxial cable 106 to the optical fibers 110, 112.
An RF input signal, having an associated signal level, is submitted to a transmitter portion of the optoelectronic transceiver 114, which in turn gains or attenuates the signal level depending on how it is set up. Then, the input signal is amplitude modulated and converted into an amplitude modulated optical signal by a laser diode 122. Both Fabry-Perot (FP) and distributed feedback (DFB) lasers can be used for this application. DFB lasers are used in conjunction with an optical isolator and have improved signal to noise over FP lasers, but at a sacrifice of substantial cost. DFB lasers are preferred, as the improved SNR allows for better system performance when aggregating multiple returns.
The laser output light from the laser diode 122 is coupled to a single mode optical fiber (i.e., the return path optical fiber 112) that carries the signal to an optical receiver 130, typically located at the head end system 132. The optical receiver 130 converts the amplitude modulated light signal back to an RF signal. Sometimes a manual output amplitude adjustment mechanism is provided to adjust the signal level of the output produced by the optical receiver. A cable modem termination system (CMTS) 134 at the head end 132 receives and demodulates the recovered RF signals so as to recover the return path data signals sent by the subscribers.
FIGS. 2 and 3 depict the transmitter 150 and receiver 170 of a prior art return path link. The transmitter 150 digitizes the RF signal received from the coaxial cable 106, using an analog to digital converter (ADC) 152. The ADC 152 generates a ten-bit sample value for each cycle of the receiver's sample clock 153, which is generated by a local, low noise clock generator 156. The output from the ADC 152 is converted by a serializer 154 into a serial data stream. The serializer 154 encodes the data using a standard 8B/10B mapping (i.e., a bit value balancing mapping), which increases the amount of data to be transmitted by twenty-five percent. This encoding is not tied to the 10-bit boundaries of the sample values, but rather is tied to the boundary of each set of eight samples (80 bits), which are encoded using 100 bits.
When the sample clock operates at a rate of 100 MHZ, the output section of the serializer 154 is driven by a 125 MHZ symbol clock, and outputs data bits to a fiber optic transmitter 158, 159 at a rate of 1.25 Gb/s. The fiber optic transmitter 158, 159 converts electrical 1 and 0 bits into optical 1 and 0 bits, which are then transmitted over an optical fiber 160. The fiber optic transmitter includes a laser diode driver 158 and a laser diode 159.
The receiver 170 at the receive end of the optical fiber 160, as shown in FIG. 3, includes a fiber receiver 172, 174 that receives the optical 1 and 0 bits transmitted over the optical fiber 160 and converts them back into the corresponding electrical 1 and 0 bits. This serial bit stream is conveyed to a de-serializer circuit 178. A clock recovery circuit 176 recovers a 1.25 GHz bit clock from the incoming data and also generates a 100 MHZ clock that is synchronized with the recovered 1.25 GHz bit clock.
The recovered 1.25 GHz bit clock is used by the de-serializer 178 to clock in the received data, and the 100 MHZ clock is used to drive a digital to analog converter 180, which converts ten-bit data values into analog voltage signals on node 182 of the head end system. In this way, the RF signal from the coaxial cable 106 is regenerated on node 182 of the head end system.